Lobby in Delhi pushes for establishment of separate department for environment

Lobby in Delhi pushes for establishment of separate department for environment

A growing lobby in the capital is pushing for the establishment of a separate department for environment which in time will develop into a full-fledged Central Environment Ministry.

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January 13, 2014

ISSUE DATE: September 15, 1980

UPDATED: December 8, 2014 17:40 IST

A growing lobby in the capital is pushing for the establishment of a separate department for environment which in time will develop into a full-fledged Central Environment Ministry. The move, which has the sanction of the prime minister, is now dependent on a report which is being finalised by a high-powered pressure-group of 13-members consisting of senior-level bureaucrats, scientists, conservationists and environment experts.

These include Professor M.G.K. Menon, secretary, Department of Science and Technology, B.B. Vohra, secretary, Ministry of Petroleum, S. S. Puri, secretary, Ministry of Agriculture, Dr M.S. Swaminathan, member, Planning Commission, Dr A.K. Ganguly of the Bhabha Atomic Research Institute and an assortment of conservationists like tiger expert, Billy Arjan Singh, writers M. Krishnan and Zafar Fatehally. A special invitee to the committee which will submit its report to the prime minister on September 15, is a former prince from the ruling family of Wankaner in Gujarat, Digvijay Singh, presently a Congress (I) MP in the Lok Sabha. Singh, who has emerged as a vociferous champion for the setting up of a separate environment department, is the only politician on the committee apart from its chairman, N. D. Tiwari, presently minister for Planning.

Obstacle: Several of the members working on the report are already on the National Committee on Environmental Planning and Coordination (Ncepc), set up in 1972, as an appendage of the Science and Technology Department. The Ncepc, which has no executive authority, was meant to coordinate the activities of various departments of the Central and state governments concerned with environment: but many now feel that it has failed to fulfil its role.

The chief obstacle, they say, has been that given the scattered status of departments concerning the environment, and the ineffective role played by state environment committees under the direct tutelage of chief ministers, all efforts at mobilising resources, manpower and opinion have been dissipated.

The Central Water Pollution Board, at present, comes under the Ministry of Works and Housing; forestry, wildlife, water management and soil conservation are marooned in the spreading banyan tree of the Agriculture Ministry, while the coordinating committee, the Ncepc, is attached to the Ministry of Science and Technology. The dichotomies bred by the physical disconnections of these departments have only aggravated the incoherence of the environmental effort.

If a small, compact department of environment were to be started, say its protagonists, then several of the existing departments could be delinked from their ministries and effectively made to function under a common banner. The prime minister who has encouraged such thinking will be considering the report submitted by the experts in such a light, since the final authority of setting up a new department or ministry lies with her.

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